Life and Crimes with Andrew RuleHome invasions have hit the headlines this month. Crime reporter Regan Hodge joins the show to talk about what he's seen covering this disturbing trend.
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Apparently if you own a nice house and a nice car is in the driveway, you're a target at the moment.
There's nothing funny about unarmed youth with a machete that could literally cut someone's head off coming into a house to pinch a car on a piggy bank and a few things.
And they said, I don't want to blame COVID. I really don't, But my son or daughter was locked up inside for so long and had so many rules and regulations around them, and once they got out, that was great, but then they just went nuts.
My'm Andrew rules his life and crimes. This month, we are seeing the rise and rise and rise of trouble in our streets and in our homes. The Herald Son is calling it our suburbs under siege. And you can see why our editors here have gone for that headline and that theme, because it's the story of our times. Reagan Hodge, you are a crime report for the Herald Son, a part in covering this story for a lot of months. Now, you and some of your colleagues you've currently dropped in to talk about it. Why are we seeing a spike in this new year of twenty twenty five. Is there a spike.
I think it's just being highlighted more aline and victims are becoming increasingly fed up with this. You know, they've sort of put up with it for the past couple of years, but I think in the past few months and over summer and it's autumn this year, they've sort of put the foot down and said they've really had enough and they want they really want to change.
It strikes me, just as not a casual observer, but as someone who's been watching this develop that we're now seeing some precise and fairly graphic examples of people who've had their homes invaded by armed youths and have been willing to talk about it and come to us and bear their stories or publish their stories. For instance, the lady we had in our paper in the last few days told about how she can't sleep and how it's really sort of ruined her life, which you can imagine happening, and more than one. She's not the only one.
But not at all. I've spoken to a few people in the last few days. We're talking in early March, and there's a young fella. He's only seven, he's in grade two. This year, his family enjoyed a home invasion at their Armadale home, and people will say, oh, it's a ritzy suburb, But there's still a seven year old kids sleeping in there. And that was in December and it's early March. He still hasn't slept a whole night in his own bed. He's just too scared that the offenders may return.
Of course, what sort of people would say oh, it's a richy suburb as some sort of oblique defense.
Who would say that people online are quite happy to have a go, And even the teenage criminals whose who drive around the suburbs. I just got off the phone to a parent of one of these teenage offenders just before I jumped in here, and a son told his mother that I don't worry about the rich people. They've got enough money to replace a car. That's why we go. That's why we go and steal them, which is just grateling to hear it.
That's just wonderful, isn't it. I mind, you, people that do the wrong thing at every level justify it, from dictators down to shop thieves and pedophiles. They always justify it and say that they're not as.
Bad as the other guy.
That's worse at eas human nature to do that, to push the blame sideways. But he's sort of shocking to hear, and it would make a lot of people very angry to hear that.
And I know one of our colleagues here at the Herald Son he questioned, why you would own a nice car now knowing that there's almost a good chance it's going to be pinched, then you might be better off owning a sort of a more vint style, less luxury vehicle, which isn't as appealing to some crooks.
It won't stop them stealing cars even if everybody switched to eight year old Volvers.
Yeah, that's what they'll steal. Tell you, what would be a good deterrent is to drive a manual.
That is the smartest thing I have heard for a long time, because none of them, nobody manual is. In fact, I have a three year old grandson who when he gets in the car with my wife, in a particular car with my wife and she uses the gear stick, he is blown away that she can do this because he's never seen either of his parents driving a manual, and he notices that it's just part of life.
Yeah, that would be a pretty handy deterrent. And I wouldn't be surprised if people opted by a manual car at the sales. I mean, people are putting the old steering wheel locks on their cars again, putting tracking devices under their bumpers to see where their car is at all times of the day in case it gets nicked. Yeah, buying a man car might be the way to go.
Oh, look into that. I quite like manuals. Have you written that story?
No, So it's out there for anyone that wants to jump by.
I think by the time we go towere, you might have a lot of these, you said, skinny guys that can get through things like dog access doors, you know, dog flaps, or through bathroom windows, those sort of tight fitting spots that most of us wouldn't get to. But they're young, they're stronger athletic, and they're pretty skinny. Is that a fair observation?
They are on the slimmer side.
Is that why the police call them skinnies?
That's possibly the reason. But we got sent some video recently of this very lanky gentleman jumping through a doggy door, and he managed to reach through the doggy door. Half his body was through it and he managed to unlock the laundry door with his hand. Yes, and away they went in. They go walk around the land room, in the kitchen. Oh, there's the handbag, there's the keys, there's a new car, there's some wheels for us. And where we go out the laundry door. They went back over the fence.
So, as well as manual cars, perhaps you either need very small dogs or if you've got a large dog, an extremely savage one.
An extremely loud one will do the trick.
A loud one does the trick. Is this the assessment of seasoned police that say loud dogs will repel skinnies Police.
And victims mainly are the ones that say, yeah, the dogs started barking and that sort of set the offenders off and they'd rather no confrontation, so off they go. You see countless videos from front porches and driveways of people creeping up to a front door and they're tiptying ready to try and unlock the front door, and then the dog starts barking, and off they go. They sprint. They've had enough not entering this home because a little yap yap dog is having to go and it's saved the day.
That's so good, isn't it.
It's pretty good footage.
I think probably there's an opening for the right sort of dogs to do this, you know, good noisy, tough dogs that will have a bit of a.
Go to those little yap yap ones, that little white fluffy ones. Anything it makes a noise, or do the job at the moment.
Good stuff. Among the examples we've read recently, there was a woman in Brighton who there was a pretty big story about her, and there was the other one in winter. Can you recall those stories and what was the essence of them?
So at Windsor at the home belongs to Flora Socrats and she was walking down her hallway in the middle of the day. It was daylight. You could see in the video that she's eventually posted and sent to us the sun shining. It's two three in the afternoon and she has decided to get her phone out after she spotted an alleged defender walking down the hallway and into her kitchen while she was home. Now this a young chap had her backpack on and a hood over his face, and she begins from meals on wheels. I don't think he was waking I'm making a house visit. I don't think he was fixing the sink or making a delivery in the post. I think he was having a snoop around of maybe what Flora socratis owned. And she decided to which was just crazy, and it's really good footage for us and the public to see. She's whipped out her phone and just chased this bloke down the hallway and she's screaming, what are you doing in my house? What are you doing? What's in your bag? What have you taken? It was really quite dramatic. And she's chased him out the front door and he jumps over the fence. One leg goes over, the second one goes over, and she's just filming this all on her phone, which twenty thirty years ago would be unheard of, of course, but that's I think the current age we live in.
That's a very good story. And was he an athletic young fellow there could jump over the fences.
He managed to get over quite quickly, so.
He wasn't just a little fat garden though he was a tall, skinny boat.
Yeah, he wasn't on the thick site.
Good and he probably doesn't understand history, because if he knew what Greeks did the German paratroopers in World War Two, it's particularly increte he might not do that because the Greeks have a habit of picking up the nearest cutlery and attacking. I once knew Greek shepherd killed seven Germans really with a knife. Really, he was quite quite willing. Now, the other case we're looking at, I think or you looked at, was at black Rock, which of course is one of our most excellent bayside suburbs in Melbourne. But you know, it's just a good, solid place. It's not too rack. It's the sort of place where a lot of people live and enjoy themselves and work hard and all that, and their reward for that is to be broken into.
Apparently, if you own a nice house and a nice car is in the driveway, you're a target at the moment. So we went out there in early March with her that some footage was circling around of these alleged defenders walking up a driveway so calmly. This bloke has a big machete in his right hand, and the homeowners estimated it to be about eighty centimeters in length. It was enormous. And he's got a hood on, he's got the slides on, he's got a little backpack on. I think, just walks up the driveway and then two blokes follow suit and then they go. This was at five o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday in early March. Not even two in the morning, not one, not midnight. This is five in the morning. People are waking up at this time, Jim.
Are these guys on bucks out the front deliveries being made?
And then they go through the side door while these two primary school aged kids sleep. I think they have a nine year old and a twelve year old. So they're inside sleeping, and they drummage around the alleged defenders. They find car keys to two vehicles, shows them they back out one and the one parked on the street off that goes and they were in and out within five minutes and two cars gone, a luxury handbag gone, a wallet gone, and the nine year old girl's piggybank was ransacked for ninety five dollars.
A piggy bank was ransacked. It's ugly stuff, really, and you know, we can make bad jokes about it, but there's nothing funny about unarmed youth who's probably six foot high and the old with a machete that could cut literally cut someone's head off, or a limbo cut an arm off, coming into a house to pinch a car on a piggy bank and a.
Few things ninety five dollars worth in notes and coins.
I know we've discussed this before another time, but motivation. You've got people who are taking cars. There's a thrill component of this. They want to drive cars fast and record it. But also for a lot of them point that they can sell it on to other crooks who do other things with them, and the handbags and so forth. It's a way to keep themselves in petty cash.
Yeah, so they can sell them on things like Facebook Marketplace. Some would sell them to drug dealers in replace for some gear. Some offenders would use those vehicles to commit cigarette burglaries, which have really kicked off in Melbourne, specifically the Southeast over the past six months.
Describe one of those your favorite cigarette burglary.
Oh, there's plenty of them, but they'll rock up to a seven to eleven or a BP early hours of the morning or eleven o'clock at night. Sometimes they're eight o'clock at night, not even late, and they'll go out in the eastern suburbs. They get hit really hard and four of them will run in. One will jump the counter and demand access to the smokes cupboard behind the jump, and the poor attendant just had to put their hands up and say, all right, go for your life. And you see the footage of these teenagers. Off they go with a big tray of smokes, dump it in the boot out that's parked out the front near the bowsers, and off they go. And they take those smokes and I believe they can either sell those to some illicit stores. Of course, this's a story for another day.
They've always been good currency cigarettes. You can always get rid of them, sell them in pubs, sell them in the illicit stores. They're great stuff and you get it like a million bucks worth on a truck. They're extremely valuable for their weight.
Yeah.
Look, obviously cars are a big driver for these good word, big driver for these guys. They want the thrill of getting the luxury car, the fast car, the better car than the mate, stole, all that sort of stuff. The basic sort of thing to do. But is there a destination for some of these cars. What happens to most of them.
A lot of them are dumped on the side of the road. So they'll take a vehicle from maybe a nice affluent suburban and it's a nice European high speed luxury car and they think, oh, how good is this? This will go like the Clappers, they'll take it down to the Monash, the EastLink Peninsula links some of the favorites. Just having a quick look at their social media activity, you see that they like filming themselves on the Monash fast speeds and the speedos rising one hundred and ninety one, ninety five two two ten. It's just you don't know cars can go that fast, but they do. And they're filming with one hand on the steering wheel at one hand with the phone, and it's just mind boggling how they don't flip and roll this car and crash and kill more innocent people. But that's the thrill that they get out of it is going at these high speeds and it's late at night, there aren't many cars on the road, but they're flying two hundred and ten, two hundred and twenty kilometers.
An hour more. A thing goes wrong. Yep, you're dead.
Small pothole and there's a few them around, yes, Or if you get a little bump in the road at that speed your toast you are.
Is there any sense that some of those cars are going to vanish off the map and not be found by the side of the road because they've gone on elsewhere, They've gone into state, or they've been pulled apart for parts. Are they going to chop shops?
So Victoria Police and we're not doing a puff piece on them, but they do a really good job to recover more than ninety four percent of vehicles stolen do They under the Operation Trinity Banner and they're out there every night doing some hard work. But more than ninety four percent of cars are found within a few days or weeks. Sure, they've been thrashed and beaten up and flogged to the till there's no tomorrow, but they find them parked in on the side of the road, you know, in a residential street or a court until someone finally reports it as suspicious vehicle parked out at the front of my joint.
Okay, The story that strikes me is where do we stand those who own the cars and where do they stand with insurance because Okay, your car's been flogged, as in flogged to death, you know, driven hard. They might have jammed it in the second year and done you know, eight thousand reefs or something. Yeah, when you know in cars are never driven beyond about two and a half thousand reefs, A lot of strain can be put on a vehicle. What do insurers say about it? Are they paying out? And is it causing premiums to go higher? It must be an effect.
I don't believe they're are too generous in paying out.
They're not.
They're victims. So I know a few victims that have said, I'm just going to sell the car now, cut my losses and sell it for almost half the price of what I bought it for because I know it's been flogged for twelve hours and they've done four hunderd kys in it just flying, And he says, it's not the same car anymore. I'm going to sell it. And something else.
Is there a sense it's now that it's no longer theirs.
That it has been dirty?
Dirty? Yeah, they say that about burglaries. People feel that their house has been breached by others and they don't want to stay there, you know.
And these people don't care about the interior of a car. They spill drinks in there, they do drugs in there. Often there's drug residue on the inside that the police have to sort of swarm and then clean as well. You can't give it back with ice on the They leave rubbish all over the place, or they throw your personal belongings out the window. It doesn't feel like your car anymore.
Okay, Yeah, interesting psychological thing there. Even if you could clean it and drive it, you'd rather not, it's not the same. Rather sell it down the line to somebody else'll create a marketing bargain luxury cars at the other end. Sometimes they say they used to be sneaking them out, luxury cars into containers and exporting them to sort of black market states where they can sell them in the Middle East and maybe parts of Europe.
I saw a Facebook marketplace at the other night, and this bloke was trying to flog it, I think an old commodore, well not even an old one that was maybe ten years old, and he said three thousand dollars cash if gone tonight. That was their post. And it was very, very suspicious. I mean, some people need money fast, but maybe not that fast.
Yes, that's interesting. Well, I know when you look up VIC roads on the regio, there's now a service for any registration plate you put in. It'll tell you all about that car. You can find if you pay a small fee, whether it's been stolen or not, all its history. There's such a demand from the public for this that VIC Grugs are now supplying this service.
People are onto it too. They're also onto the court lists, and we see this popping up online of repair defenders. Some vigilantes in the community will look up the Victorian court lists and see when their favorite criminal is due to a peer at a local manage. It's called so they've really called on to where the movements of these criminals A.
Good a bit of citizen sort of activity.
That's it.
Nothing wrong with that. The crooks are quite happy to use the internet to further their own ends, so absolutely it can be used against them, it has been said, and it appeals to me and to most people. I think if you are found with a weapon on somebody else's premises, you don't get bail. A weapon equals jail. You're locked up you're not out on the streets again tomorrow to do it all again. That would seem to me to be eminently fair and sensible because the danger. You know, they're saying, we're putting them out on bail because it's bad for them to be locked up with other bad guys. True, there's no doubt that's true. But there comes a point when the danger to other people out weighs that.
Absolutely. The community at some point has to be protected prioritized as well. No one wants to put kids in jails. That's never a great outcome, is it that.
Unless they're carrying machetes and knives and possibly guns, then you do.
And it's not a life sentence, it's not decades in present. There has to be some consequences for your actions at some point now some people, and it's a really good argument to have with or a debate to have with people. Yes, they're going to mix with other criminals inside it, whether it's Parkville if they're young, or a bar and if they're older, but there has to become a point where the community safety needs to be prioritized.
It seems to me to be an element of false logic in all that handringing sort of bleeding heart stuff, because here we have youths who buy and large aren't buy and large aren't solo offenders. They're going around with other ears. They're already in gangs. They're already rubbing shoulders with other crooks, and they've already learned the bad habits. So is it that bad if you know, three guys in this gang go and get banged up for six months or four months or three months. They're already living in some sharehouse somewhere.
A lot of the kids who are committing these sorts of crimes are living in residential care, so under the state's care, they live together. They come and go as they please. You obviously can't lock them up inside residential care, so they can leave the residents and they reported missing, but they'll go for days on end, they'll meet up with whoever they really want, and who knows what they get up to in the three or four days while they're out.
What is your view, and I'm imagining that you would base it on what police have told you, police that are right at the front line of this, on where drugs fit into this, with drug use that alters behavior, and so the keenness to obtain more drugs, which also have influences behavior. It makes you more desperate to do stuff. Is that A big.
Element from my experience is when we're talking youth criminals, it's not a massive cohort of it. Yes, there are some that are heavily addicted to ice, and I spoke to someone whose son has been on ICE for five months and he's midway through his teens. That's as bad as it gets. Pretty much. Some will go and smoke some marijuana with some friends, which some would say is on the lesser end of the scale, and that's not the driver of their offending. I think the driver is just mainly the thrill of it. Yes, there is an element of selling vehicles and handbags and clothes for some harder illicit drugs, but I wouldn't say most or even majority of them. I think it's really the thrill of the chase.
It's strange that we have this outbreak of behavior, almost as if it's viral, you know, it's spread from one of the other. And I presume that every generation has examples of similar stuff. After probably after World War Two, we had baby boomer youths turn up in numbers because their parents had a lot of kids, and I can remember gangs of skinheads and sharpies and all the rest of it roaming around doing bad stuff. So it's not as if errant youth and juvenile delinquents there are anything new. And probably you could trace that all the way back to the colonial era, where we had bush rangers and alaricans and lauts and layobouts running around the streets dishing it out, you know, with bricks and boots, as old poem went. So it's tempting to think that this is new and awful, and yet in some way it's probably happened every twenty or thirty years in some sort of wave motion. I hope that's true.
I hate blaming COVID for things It was really prevalent four or five years ago for some of us, and I think it's a cop out for some to blame COVID and the lockdowns for some things. I just spoke to four mothers of teenage offenders in the suburbs and they all had one thing in common, and they said, I don't want to blame COVID. I really don't, but my son or daughter was locked up inside for so long and they had so many rules and regulations around them. And once they got out, that was great, but then they just went nuts. They wanted to see everything. They wanted to hang out at all times of the day and night. They wanted to meet all these new people. They didn't want any structure in their life anymore. They didn't return to community sport. They didn't want to go to basketball at four o'clock, they didn't want to go to cricket at nine o'clock on Saturday. They don't live hard, live fast. They were sick of being told what to do, and they just quote went nuts.
It sort of ruined the structure in their lives by having too much of it. Yeah, they've been imprisoned in a sense.
And I don't like blaming that for everything. I mean, a lot of people will blame it, but I think I think it's a fair and reason argument. This time.
It's easy to forget for anybody that's an adult, formed adult that's over the age of twenty five or something, to forget what it's like to not be twenty five or thirty five or forty five, to be fourteen, fifteen and sixteen is it's a goat's head soup of hormones and all the rest of it, peer pressure, the biological imperative to run around with other kids the same age, all that stuff which was suppressed for you know, essentially a couple of years, which is a massive amount of time for people that age. I thought it was sort of a nice chance not to go into work. But I'm not the problem. No, it's a problem when you've got kids that age basically cooped up. Looking at the offenders as groups of people, do you see any particular trends or groups or you know, even male versus female. Are there many girls involved?
Well, I think they're becoming increasingly involved in this, and this purely because of what the police will tell us who they've arrested. And we just sort of notice an increase in the amount of young girls being caught up in aig bergs and home invasions and car thefs and cigarette burglaries and things like that, and now I guess just joining in on the fun with everyone else. So yeah, it's pretty worrying that fourteen fifteen, sixteen year olds of both genders are being sort of caught up in this. Now it's not just the young rap back boys, it's young girl. That's it.
That's an interesting trend, although I guess probably if we go back in history, the skinheads and all the rest of it, there always were girls around the edges or front and center, some of them sometimes. So Reagan, you're going to go now and you're going to go back and work on Suburbs under Siege, which is the Heralds campaign. Some of our listeners when they hear this, so that that campaign will be sort of over, but you can guarantee that the offending won't be over. So the story lives on and you, Reagan Hodge, are going to be working on it with your colleagues. We will here in that corner of the Herald Sun newsroom that's always really busy.
It's always busy in that part of the room.
Crime never sleeps. Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more, go to Haroldsun dot com dot au, forward slash Andrew rule one word For advertising inquiries, go to news podcasts sold at news dot com dot au. That is all one word news podcasts sold and if you want further in motion about this episode, links are in the description.
